The Goodbye Summer

by Patricia Gaffney

  “Damn dog, get him off me, Caddie, tell him no, would you? Get off…” He ended up kicking his slipper off so Finney could have it. Unattached to a foot, though, Finney had no interest in it.

  Caddie wrestled the leash from Nana and reeled him in. Peace reigned for one minute; then Susan rolled her wheelchair into the room. Finney had seen Nana’s wheelchair before, so why he went into a fit of shrill, earsplitting barking at the sight of Susan’s, Caddie couldn’t imagine. Susan shrank back against the vinyl seat, gaping in fear and trying to make the chair go backward, but her left arm was weaker than her right and in her distress she made it turn in a circle. Finney took that as a provocation and began to make fake lunges at the wheels, barking and snarling and showing his teeth. “Finney!” Caddie shouted about fifty times. Every time she almost had him, he squirted away.

  At last, he wound his extension leash so many times around Susan’s chair that he had to stop or choke to death. Caddie was hoping for the latter, but he halted, winded and panting, head down, hackles raised. “He’s not like this,” she kept saying as she unhooked him, shoved him into Nana’s arms, and got his leash untied around the chair wheels. “He’s a really nice dog.” No one objected when she suggested to Nana that they take him up to her room for a private visit.

  “Mrs. Tourneau says to tell you those peonies are finally blooming.”

  “What peonies?”

  “Remember the peonies you let her dig up and plant on her side? At least three years ago, and all they did was send up leaves. Well, this year they’ve finally got flowers.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “We had a good program on Saturday afternoon,” Caddie went on. “Remember, I told you we were playing the Vivaldi concerto? Well, we had to change it at the last minute because the first violinist came down with food poisoning. So instead we did ‘Spotlight on Chopin,’ but it went fine.”

  “Mmm,” Nana said dreamily. She looked half asleep in her chair, with a dozing Finney in her lap, getting his little white hairs all over her skirt. Seeing them together like that, relaxed and content, Caddie couldn’t be sorry she’d brought him, even though he’d disgraced himself.

  “Lessons have been going pretty well. So far only one person’s called to cancel for the summer, so that’s good. So far so good. And I have two new students, so as of now it’s a net gain—a little boy for piano and a lady for violin. She just got a divorce and she’s changing her life. She says her husband always told her she was too old to learn the violin, so now she’s showing him.”

  “Ha,” Nana said. “Show him.”

  “So I think we’re okay, I think everything’s going to be fine…” She tapered off, didn’t say “with the money situation this summer,” because—why bring it up at all?

  “You get your new cast tomorrow, don’t forget. A canvas thing you can take on and off—won’t that be nice?”

  “Yep.” Nana put her head back and closed her eyes. She fell into naps so easily these days.

  Before she could drift off, Caddie said, “You like it here, don’t you, Nan?”

  “I told you I do.”

  “I know, but do you still?” She hadn’t said it in a while, and she’d been here almost four weeks. “You can come home anytime, you know. Just say the word. Even for a visit.”

  “Why would I want to come home? You come to see me every day. So I have everything. Oh, honey, I’m just so glad you thought of this place. Thank you.” She reached over and squeezed Caddie’s hand.

  Well, that answered that question. Anyway, why wouldn’t Nana love it here? Something was always going on, a class or a game, a conversation, a field trip in the ratty old van with WAKE HOUSE ELDER CARE & CONVALESCENCE still visible under a fresh coat of paint—Brenda had the name covered up when the van got too old to be a good advertisement for the house. Nana got plenty of stimulation, much more than she had at home with just Caddie and the television. Her biography in “We Remember” had sparked interest in her life as an artist, and she’d agreed to give a talk about it for the Gray Gurus—or the Golden Geezers, as Cornel called it—an informal lecture series in which anybody who’d had a particularly interesting job or taken a fascinating trip or had some unusual knowledge could give a presentation on it to the other residents. Nana was more excited about this than she let on. Her lecture was weeks away, but she was already writing down notes and gathering her materials.

  “What about you?” Nana asked. “What else new and exciting have you done besides change everything around in my house?”

  “I should never have told you about that.” Nana was kidding, sort of, but she never missed a chance to bring up what Caddie had done to the living room. “Well, I’m learning a new Beethoven, the Sonata Number Seventeen—”

  “New and exciting, I said. Have you called up any more men in the sex ads?”

  “The personal ads, and no, I haven’t. Once was enough.”

  “Caddie Ann—”

  “Did you know twenty-seven million Americans live alone? And the median age of the whole population is thirty-five? I read that somewhere. So I’m definitely…I’m in the whatchacallit.”

  “Mainstream,” Nana said, sighing.

  “What’s this?” Caddie picked up a snail shell from the windowsill. “And this.” A dry twig and, next to it, pieces of a speckled blue eggshell. “What’s this stuff?”

  Nana sat up straight. “That’s for my project. Be careful, don’t break anything. Put that down, Caddie, it’s fragile.”

  “Sorry. This is your new art project? How exciting.” Nana had been hinting about a new work, something big taking shape in her mind, but Caddie hadn’t been sure if it was real or not. Sometimes her grandmother’s art schemes stayed there, in her mind, never actually bore fruit in a material way. If this one was already taking form in twigs and eggshells, that was a good sign. Nana was always happiest when she was making something.

  “It’s a monument,” she said. “To oldness. To age. It will symbolize the courage and beauty of elderliness. It’ll have ‘longevity’ in the title. That’s all I can say right now.”

  “How will it—what form will it take?”

  “Well, I don’t know that yet. It’ll be a construction. It’ll have to be big, representational.”

  “You mean it’ll look like something?”

  “Not necessarily. It will have representatives, I mean. Of everything that’s old.”

  “Everything?” Another global project. Nana’s art was so inclusive.

  Through the window, Caddie saw a black taxi stop at the curb in front of the house. The driver jumped out, came around, opened the rear passenger door, and stuck his hand in to help somebody out. A woman swung her legs out, nice legs under a knee-length cherry-red skirt, and stood up. She had on a straw hat with a wide brim; Caddie couldn’t see her face until she leaned back against the car to look up at the house. Just for a second, it felt as if they were looking right into each other’s eyes. The woman said something to the driver that made him laugh. She laughed, too, and Caddie heard one ringing, agreeable “Ha!”

  “Nana,” she said excitedly, “I think it’s the new lady, the one who’s taking the tower suite. The room you wanted, remember? I bet it’s her—Brenda said she was coming today or tomorrow.” The tower suite was a beautiful, round-walled bedroom with its own sitting room, but it was already taken, reserved, when Nana moved in. It would’ve been too expensive, anyway.

  Nana wheeled her chair over and peered down with Caddie.

  “Doesn’t she look nice? Where are your glasses, can you see? She looks young.” Relatively; middle sixties, Caddie estimated. Around here, that was a whippersnapper. Brenda said her name was Dorothea Barnes. She was a widow with no children. She came from somewhere on the Eastern Shore, but she’d grown up here, Brenda said. She was coming home. “Barnes,” Cornel had been saying suspiciously for days. “Barnes. I don’t recall any Dorothea Barnes.” He’d grown up in Michaelstown, too, and he thought he knew everybody.<
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  There went Brenda, hurrying down the front walk to greet the new arrival. She had a lot of luggage; the cab driver kept pulling boxes and suitcases from the trunk and piling them on the curb. She saw Brenda and went toward her, holding out her hands. She greeted her that way, shaking her hands warmly with both of hers, smiling and tilting her head to listen to Brenda’s welcoming words.

  “Doesn’t she look nice?” Caddie said again. “It’ll be good to have a new person here, then you can feel like an old veteran.” Although, actually, one of the things Nana liked best about Wake House was that she was the new kid; she got a lot of attention that way. “Not that you won’t still be the—Nan? What’s wrong?” She looked funny. Guilty.

  “Nothing.”

  “Finney! Where is he? Did you let him off the leash? Oh, Nana.” He was gone, his leash in a coil on the floor, and they’d stupidly left the door open. “He went downstairs, I bet—he probably smells those cats.”

  “I’m coming, too,” Nana said. Caddie started to push her chair, but Nana said, “I can do it—you better go!”

  She took the stairs, Nana took the elevator. From the last landing, Caddie could see Cornel, Bea and Edgie Copes, and one of the Harris wives loitering in the front hall. Even Mrs. Brill had pulled her chair in the Red Room closer to the archway for a better view.

  “What a beautiful porch,” came a musical voice from outside, over the racket of manic barking. “So pretty. It’s just the way I remember it.”

  A lot of things happened at once. Brenda bustled through the front door holding a suitcase in each hand, calling back, “Oh, yes, it’s lovely out here on warm evenings. Sometimes the whole house gathers—”

  Cornel’s voice cut her off: “Look out, get that dog. Where’s Frances? Caddie, would you please—” Finney shot through the door, whirled around, and began to bark louder, high, excited, hysterical-sounding barks that could vibrate your eardrums and rattle your teeth.

  “Finney!” Caddie shouted, starting down the half flight of steps. Fur stood up in a line down the middle of his back; you’d think he lived here and the UPS man was at the door. “Finney! Stop it!” Dorothea Barnes came in next, followed by the taxi driver, loaded down with more suitcases. “Oh, what a cute dog,” said Mrs. Barnes. She leaned down, put out her hand, and Finney bit her.

  “Ow!”

  Caddie clattered down the rest of the stairs, horrified. Everybody gathered around, Brenda, Cornel, the cabdriver, Mrs. Harris, Mrs. Brill. “How bad is it? Are you bleeding? Did it break the skin? Does it hurt?”

  Finney quit barking, began to wag his stubby tail frantically, trying to undo this.

  Caddie pushed through the crush of worried people around Mrs. Barnes. “Oh, no, oh, I’m so sorry—he’s my grandmother’s dog but I brought him, it’s my fault—are you all right?”

  “Fine.” She looked pale, though. Her hat was askew, mussing her silver-gray hair. She had dark, high-arching eyebrows, startled Vs above clear blue eyes. She was trying to smile, but it was a shaky effort. She held her right hand in her left—the middle finger was turning purple at the nail.

  “Did it break the skin?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. Just a bruise.”

  Someone said “rabies.” Somebody said “rabies shots.”

  “He’s had his shot,” Caddie rushed to say. “It lasts three years—he’s only two!”

  “I’m fine.” She reached out to Caddie’s shoulder and gave it a soft press with her good hand. “Really.”

  “Sit down,” Brenda urged. She looked ill, probably imagining lawsuits. Dorothea Barnes let herself be led over by Brenda to the church pew under the coat hooks along the wall. Cornel offered to get her a glass of water. Mrs. Harris said she’d call the doctor.

  “I am really quite all right.” She looked up at them all and gave a shivery laugh. “I was startled, mostly. That wasn’t quite the welcome I was expecting!”

  Caddie started apologizing again, but she waved it off, insisting she was fine. The crisis was over. Finney had gone into the Red Room to be alone. Caddie looked around for Nana.

  She was huddled in her wheelchair by the elevator. She had her mouth covered with the fingertips of both hands and she was wide-eyed, pressing back into the vinyl seat. Caddie hurried over to her.

  “Nana? Hey, it’s okay. It’s over, everything’s fine.”

  “Are they going to put him to sleep?”

  “Finney? No.”

  “They have to kill them to look at their brains.”

  “They what?” Caddie touched her, tried to take her hands from her face, but Nana was frozen. Her fear infected Caddie—she’d never seen her like this before.

  Caddie felt a hand on her back. It was Mrs. Barnes. “Hi,” she said to Nana. Somebody had wrapped a handkerchief around her finger; she folded her arms to keep it out of Nana’s sight. “I’m Thea. Thea Barnes. How are you?”

  Nana couldn’t speak, only stare at her with round, worried eyes.

  “You know what, I think I just scared him. I bent down too fast, that’s what happened. He’s a lovely dog.”

  Nana took her hands away. “He is. A lovely dog. I don’t know why that happened—he’s never done it before.”

  “Well,” said Caddie. No point in going overboard.

  Mrs. Barnes held out her good hand.

  Nana took it. “I’m Frances Winger,” she said cordially.

  “Hello, Frances.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  “It’s nice to meet you.”

  Nana’s relieved smile turned crafty. “Did you bring anything old?”

  6

  The offices of CAT, Creative Animal Therapy, turned out to be one room over a candle and incense shop on a one-way downtown street. Finney was afraid of the slippery wooden steps; Caddie had to pick him up and carry him to the second floor. She could hear talking on the other side of the frosted glass in a door at the end of the hallway, so she opened the door and peeked in. A man at a desk heaped high with scattered papers, files, and folders swiveled in his chair and gestured for her to come in.

  He was on the phone. “No, we’re nationwide, we’ve got over eight hundred CAT teams around the country, but the training for the volunteers is always local. Through workshops with licensed instructors in each…that’s right, and then at headquarters they coordinate the volunteers with facilities in their own communities. No, this is just a regional office. Small. Um…well, me.” He put his hand over the phone, said “Hi, have a seat, I’ll just be a minute,” and went back to his conversation.

  There wasn’t a seat, not unless she moved a basketball, a pair of running shoes, and a bag of kitty litter from the only other chair in the small, cluttered office. Finney was pulling her around to all the corners anyway, sniffing everything, as nervous as if he were at the vet’s. He must smell other animals. He dragged her over to where several plaques and certificates in frames were tacked to the wall. Service awards, outstanding citizen citations, training certificates. All for Christopher Dalton Fox, except for the ones for Christopher Dalton Fox’s dog, King, who had several plaques of his own for animal citizenship and community service. Christopher was the man behind the desk—she recognized him from all the photographs of him and King in chummy poses with various groups of people and other dogs.

  One caught Caddie’s eye in particular because it was obviously taken in a nursing home. A real one, not like Wake House; the residents were feeble and old, many in wheelchairs. King, a large, beautiful dog, maybe a shepherd except he was fluffier, sat on a long sofa between two frail old ladies, and all three were beaming into the camera with the same calm, gentle, beatific expression. There, thought Caddie. That’s what she’d wanted, that kind of animal-human bonding. It looked almost spiritual. Why couldn’t Finney be like King?

  Christopher Fox got off the phone. “Hi. Sorry about that.” He stood up and came around his desk. “You must be…uh…”

  “Caddie Winger.”

  “Good to meet
you. And this must be Finnegan.” He went down on one knee and patted the other. Caddie looked down at his bent head, admiring the clean part in his streaky blond hair, lighter than hers and almost as long. It fell around the sides of his face in bright, tawny waves. She thought of a golden retriever, that russet-yellow color, the fur just bathed and brushed.

  Finney came to him instantly, nubby tail vibrating, sniffing his hands, his shoes, his crotch. “Sit,” Christopher said in a firm voice, and Finney did. It wasn’t exactly a miracle; he’d heard the command before. Heard but rarely obeyed it, especially if no dog biscuit reward was involved. “Lie down,” Christopher said next, but Finney had reached his limit. “Sit” was all he could do, and he was tired of doing that. He jumped up and licked Christopher on the nose.

  “He’s being very good, actually,” Caddie said. “He wasn’t this good on Tuesday.”

  “You said he bit someone.”

  “Nipped. Bit, yes. He bit her.”

  “A stranger, someone he didn’t know?” Under Christopher’s slow, petting hands Finney flopped over on his back and stuck his feet in the air.

  “Wow, he really likes you. Yes, it was a woman he’d never met before, a nice older lady, she wasn’t doing anything except trying to pet him. Do you know Wake House? It’s a sort of assisted-living place on Calvert Street.”

  “Wake House.” He shook his head. “That’s one I don’t know.”